Sunday, April 27, 2014

Alexander

GREAT STUFF

Work
continues at Camp Sisterwood onBodice
Ripper, the post-modern feminist musical version of the Jack the Ripper
story that I am attempting to choreograph. I must admit it's not going as well
as I might like. I had Bob Mackie run up some lovely little satin slips for the
ladies of the chorus to wear in the second act brothel ballet only to have
something akin to open mutiny from the ladies of the cast. They seem to think
that flannel shirts and jackboots are the proper attire for any function and
I'm just not getting very far with them at all, although I did at least get
them to put taps on their boots for a rousing first act tap number about the
queen entitledVictoria's
Secret.

I sat down with Vera Charles, who is playing the
lead, for apple martinis in a local watering hole in an attempt to find some
way through this troubled production. She thinks perhaps a tried and true stage
gimmick might be just the trick so we've decided to convert the first act
finale into an aerial ballet. Flying by Foy is arriving this weekend to get the
ladies into harness. Perhaps hauling them up on cables will make them a little
lighter on their feet. I have this vision of Vera, as the ripper character, all
in black, flitting amongst the ladies of the chorus in front of a blood red
cyclorama bearing a large axe in one hand and a machete in the other.

After the martinis, we joined Normy at the local
Cineplex for a matinee screening of Oliver Stone's new historical epic,Alexander. Stone is not usually
drawn to period material, usually choosing instead to probe the mind and mores
of the modern but one can see his interest in Alexander the Great and his story
with its themes of conquest, visionary leadership, lust, power and hubris. The
historical Alexander rose, in the fourth century BC, from relative obscurity as
king of Macedonia to ruler of much of the known world within the space of
fifteen years. After his premature death, his empire collapsed rapidly but the
Hellenistic civilization he brought to lands from Greece to India altered the
lives of millions and changed the course of historical development of Eastern
Europe, the Middle East, Northern Africa and Central Asia.

Alexander, the film, tries to find a way to make sense of a tumultuous and event
filled life occurring in a historical period with which many of us may be
unfamiliar. To keep the film under three hours, Stone has to settle for a
Classics Comics Highlights version, skipping from scene to scene and leaving
out a lot of the historical record. While Stone is able to keep his narrative
thread, he sacrifices any coherent point of view. We never learn if this
Alexander is a hero, a madman, a genius. As soon as we have a scene that seems
to establish him in a certain light, we skip ahead to something opposing. This
may be deliberate in order to show the massive contradictions in his life, but
it's not good cinema without someone to guide us through it. Colin Farrell, in
the lead role, is too remote. We never get inside his head and nothing comes
through about how this man could have inspired his armies or created his
empire. He's not a bad actor, although most of his big speeches smack of
community theater productions ofHenry
V, he's just not given a well realized character.

To try and keep us on track, Stone as
writer/director gives us the voice over narrator (Anthony Hopkins as the aged
general Ptolemy who ended up as ruler of Egypt after the collapse of the
empire). While Ptolemy is present (in the guise of younger actor Robert Earley)
for most of the key scenes, there's no real sense of connection between the
two. Ptolemy is no more than one of a dozen supporting generals and friends who
appear interchangeably in various battle scenes and strategy sessions. The
supporting cast come off a bit better. Val Kilmer obviously relishes his role
as Alexander's father, one eyed King Philip of Macedon and has great fun
roaring with abandon. But he has a coherent character to play. As Alexander's
mother, Olympias, Angelina Jolie has a fierceness and determination which far out
shadow Farrell's; it's she who should be leading armies into the unknown and
they'd follow her. Unfortunately, someone decided to show her 'otherness' by
modeling her performance on Natasha fromRocky
and Bullwinkle. I kept expecting her to bully some handmaiden into finding
moose and squirrel.

The film plays coy with Alexander's personal
life. His well documented life long relationship with his comrade Hephastion
(Jared Leto) is there, but so circumspect in its dealing with its physical
nature (one assumes to keep from offending the mall crowd) that it's probably a
mystery to many viewers why Hephastion is even in the film at all. It doesn't
help that Mr. Leto has the charisma of an anchovy. The relationship with the
Persian boy, Bagoas (Francisco Bosch) is so downplayed, that it's barely in the
film. Farrell only truly romps with Rosario Dawson as the Afghan woman, Roxane,
whom Alexander marries to help cement relations with the Asiatic part of the
empire. (A move that helped make him the only successful conqueror of
Afghanistan). Hellenistic views of sexuality were very different than our own
and the attempts to tuck Alexander neatly into modern constructs seem
disingenuous and dishonest to say the least.

The film brings the ancient world to life. The
gorgeous sets are at their best when they're not overly impressive. (Babylon
here looks an awful lot likeIntolerance,
only grander.) The entire Moroccan army is employed to recreate the great
battle of Gaugamela in which Alexander defeated Darius of Persia cementing his
fame and empire. The only problem being that the film doesn't ever get around
to explaining who Darius was or any of the events that led up to the battle.
The battle sequences are technically skillful, full of severed limbs, squirting
blood and rampaging elephants, but they all go on for far too long making the
movie seem noisily tedious at times.

I can't say the film is as bad as some have
suggested. At the same time, some tidy editing and some judicious rewriting could
have helped immensely. It's worth a peek on some rainy Saturday while waiting
for your nails to dry.Mythic paintings. Horse taming. Royal
assassination. Persian harem. Elephant stomping. Impalements. Pithing.
Gratuitous symbolic eagle. Drinking bouts. Stoning aftermath. Monkey battle.
Symbolic ring dropping.